Im-Politic: On the Democrats’ Debates

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African Americans, Amy Klobuchar, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Beto O'Rourke, China, Cory Booker, debates, Democratic Party, Democrats, Democrats debates, economy, election 2020, Elizabeth Warren, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Michael Bennet, Pete Buttigieg, race relations, tariffs, Trade, Trump

So thanks to last week’s two debates, we’ve now seen most of the Democratic presidential candidates in, as sportscasters like to say, “limited action,” and have had some time to ruminate about the results. Here’s my sense of some of the biggest takeaways.

>The Democrats generally are in denial about the health of the economy. This problem became clear immediately, as the first question on Night One, posed to Massachusetts U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, noted that her “many plans” for the economy come “at a time when 71 percent of Americans say the economy is doing well, including 60 percent of Democrats. What do you say to those who worry this kind of significant change could be risky to the economy?”

Warren’s response? Ignore the cited polling data and claim – presenting no evidence – that “Who is this economy really working for? It’s doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top.” For good measure, sharing her fact-free perspective at the outset were her Minnesota Senate colleague Amy Klobuchar, and former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke. And don’t forget former Vice President Joe Biden’s charge on Night Two that “Donald Trump has put us in a horrible situation” economically. Or California Senator Kamala Harris’ view that the economy is great only for those who own stocks.

No one is saying that too many Americans aren’t still being left behind in an economy that’s unmistakably shifted into a somewhat higher gear under President Trump. No one is saying that the economy hasn’t shown some signs of slowing. (See, e.g., this recent post.) No one is saying that the economy is going to be a decisively winning Trump issue in 2020. (This new poll throws lots of cold water on that proposition.) And no one is saying that because the economy is so far performing pretty well, Americans are especially happy about the overall state of the union. (Survey results like these make clear that they’re not.)

But no one should be feeling too great about so many politicians remaining so deeply in denial (or at least pontificating as if they are) about a state of affairs that is so easy to document.

>Kamala Harris is simply race-baiting. Let’s assume that all of the California U.S. Senator’s allegations about former Vice President Joe Biden’s record on school busing decades ago are completely accurate. How can the conclusion be avoided that she’s trying to portray Biden as remaining deficient as racial issues today, and in the process, stir up the worst kinds of national divisions? After all, he served as the second-in-command to the nation’s first African-American president. Black politicians, and especially long-serving black politicians, have publicly praised him as a long-time trusted ally.

In other words, whatever Biden’s past shortcomings on race, nothing could be more obvious than that they’ve vanished in every meaningful way, and in every way relevant to policymaking. It’s no longer possible accurately and responsibly to depict him as a problem for the African-American community. Harris’ indictment also indicates a refusal to acknowledge that individuals can learn, evolve, and grow, and to give them any credit when they do.

I recently spoke about this privately with an African-American friend who argued that the real Biden race problem that’s emerged recently stemmed from his indignant response to similar allegations and insinuations by New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, another 2020 African-American Democratic hopeful. In other words, Biden’s refusal to apologize for comments about racist southern Senators signaled an insensitivity to racial slurs (like describing African-American men as “boys”) that could well prompt younger blacks to stay at home in the fall of 2020, and boost Mr. Trump’s odds of reelection.

I don’t disagree with that political analysis at all (though I don’t consider it a foregone conclusion, either). But politics aside, that would point to the same type of intolerance, censoriousness, and sanctimony being displayed by Harris. More of this, America these days clearly doesn’t need.

>Biden performed better than I expected. The former Vice President and still 2020 Democratic front-runner has widely been declared a major loser in his debate exchange with Harris, and poll results reinforce that conclusion. I agree that Biden was poorly prepared for attacks on racial issues that he must have known would come that evening from someone. In particular, his substantive defense of his busing record – that he only opposed a sweeping federal mandate – did indeed (as Harris charged) ignore the decisive role that the Federal government has regularly needed to play in advancing civil rights when state government were either hostile or indifferent to the cause.

Nevertheless, Biden certainly didn’t act like the “Sleepy Joe” he’s been labeled as by President Trump, and that seemed like an apt description for some of his more disjoint moments in these early phases of the 2020 election (for example, this rambling discussion of the China challenge). He flashed temper (or at least indignation), he sounded articulate, he stood tall, his energy level didn’t notably flag. In fact, assuming that his health holds up (he turns 77 in November), Biden looked like a candidate who could mix it up with Trump on a debate stage. As demonstrated by the race relations storm he’s kicked up, however, he’s as gaffe-prone as ever.

>The Democrats have no grip on China issues. Sure, they generally acknowledge that China poses problems for the United States (but there’s some disagreement as to what they are). But few so far have offered realistic solutions to these problems.

For example, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, “I think the president’s been right to push back on China but he’s done it in completely the wrong way. We should mobilize the entire rest of the world who all have a shared interest in pushing back on China’s mercantilist trade policies and I think we can do that.”

What a shame that he was never asked why countries like Germany, Japan, and South Korea, which profit enormously from selling sophisticated industrial machinery to China, would want to see any slowing in U.S.-China trade when so many of those machines are used in factories that supply the American market?

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana agrees that the China challenge “is a really serious one,” but seemed most concerned that the Chinese are “using technology for the perfection of dictatorship.” He endorsed the stale and misleading “tariffs are taxes” trope, and insisted that “the biggest thing we’ve got to do is invest in our own domestic competitiveness.” He never explained if he’s OK with the infrastructure the nation unmistakably needs being manufactured in China and elsewhere abroad, or why “education” is so critical when children in China and everywhere else have the same capacity to capitalize on their learning as children in America – even though population considerations will long ensure that their wages stay orders of magnitude lower no matter how advanced the work they do.

Interestingly, Sanders is the only Democratic hopeful with a lengthy record of voting in Congress on China trade and related economic issues – always correctly (in my view) opposing reckless expansion. That explains CNBC’s ironic but on-target recent observation that “Sanders in particular has targeted Trump because his trade views overlap with the president’s.” And hence mushy Sanders statements like “I think we do need new trade policies that are fair to the working people of this country not just to the CEOs, but as usual, I think Trump gets it wrong in terms of implementation,”

Warren seems equally conflicted, agreeing with Mr. Trump that “tariffs are one part of reworking our trade policy overall” but lamely chiding him for engaging in “tariff negotiation by tweet” instead of “fighting back” with “strength and a coherent plan, not with chaos.”

Indeed, Warren has a detailed-looking plan for implementing a strategy of “economic patriotism.” It contains some good features, like what seem to be industrial policy proposals (with no real specifics), tightening up Buy American government procurement policies, and requirements that production that results from (amped up) taxpayer-funded research and development programs take place in the United States. But it’s unclear whether she realizes that tariffs are going to be central to their success. In addition, she appears quite enamored with devaluing the dollar as a trade policy panacea. And she puts considerable stock in government-run training and reeducation programs that, to date, have been proven failures and that have long (as noted above) evidently assume that Americans are the most educable and train-able people on earth.

If you’re a Democrat, or any American who wants to see elections held between the most qualified candidates possible, the good news is that the party’s hopefuls will have eleven more debate chances to up their games. Unfortunately, it might also turn out that the nation will simply witness eleven more events marked by hollow, and too often angry, grandstanding.

Im-Politic: You Bet Oprah Could Win

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2016 elections, 2018 elections, 2020 elections, Bernie Sanders, Democrats, economy, Elizabeth Warren, Im-Politic, independents, Joe Biden, Oprah Winfrey, politics, Republicans, Trump

Here’s a confession: I’ve never watched “Oprah.”

Still, since I’ve been in a waking state for much of the last few decades, I’m of course aware of the prominence she’s achieved in American culture and society, and the high regard in which so many hold her. That’s why I take absolutely seriously the idea that Oprah Winfrey could win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, and even take the White House.

One suggestive data point is already out. In a new poll, she tops President Trump by an impressive ten percentage points as a presidential choice. And as many observers have pointed out, unless the field of likely Democratic White House hopefuls changes markedly in the next two or so years (and we’re of course still awfully early in the presidential cycle, so don’t rule out that possibility by any means), Winfrey would face unusually flawed opponents.

Indeed, at this point, the leading Democratic contenders look to be Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and former Vice President Joe Biden. Whatever you think of them as individuals either personally or politically, all three are septuagenarians, and two look to be well to the Left of a critical mass of American voters. And underscoring their vulnerability is how enthusiastically so many Democrats and progressives have reacted to the idea of “Oprah 2020.”

More reasons for optimism about a Winfrey White House run:

>She’s rich as Croesus and would have no trouble raising outside money.

>She has ocean-wide name recognition.

>She has made a career largely on her matchless ability to “feel the pain” of Main Street Americans (a skill that former President Bill Clinton so effectively conveyed).

>Mr. Trump has already broken through the celebrity “glass ceiling.”

>Similarly, she shows no evidence of being a whiz on policy issues, but no one associated such expertise with candidate Trump, either. And plenty of veteran Democratic- and liberal leaning academics and other specialists would no doubt flock to her cause and give her all the tutoring she needs for a campaign.

>Like the president, she can boast real business success.

Obviously, Winfrey would face important obstacles. I wouldn’t include race or gender on that list. It seems clear to me she’s transcended both categories. But her background isn’t completely scandal-free – as this article makes clear. In this vein, she could well be hurt from the inevitable gushing her candidacy will draw from a Hollywood/celebrity class that much of the public finds completely off-putting.

Perhaps most important, once Winfrey throws her hat in the ring, the halo currently surrounding her will surely fall off, and she’ll start looking more like a conventional politician. Certainly, even though the Mainstream Media will be favorably disposed to her (as they have been to any Trump opponent), she’ll still be under a much harsher spotlight than she has been so far.

Even so, there’s one advantage she’ll have in a 2020 campaign that I believe will be especially important in putting her over the top. And I feel pretty confident about this view even if Mr. Trump enjoys major traditional tailwinds like an economy that keeps performing reasonably well (at least by the standard indicators that attract all the media attention) and U.S. avoidance of military involvement in foreign crises that generate lots of casualties and costs.

Let’s call this advantage “Trump fatigue syndrome.” It’s entirely possible that Americans could enjoy the kinds of safety and prosperity that have often won presidents second terms, and still yearn for a return to normality in their politics and public life – or at least greater normality.

On the one hand, I agree with those (including many Democrats) who insist that the typical voter is much less interested in the “Russia-gate” charges and the other scandals with which the president has been charged than with their personal financial and economic conditions, and their sense of security.

On the other hand, though, I’m confident that those charges, their endless repetition in the media, and the President’s consistently harsh reactions to them and to any and all criticisms, are generating a wearying effect – and starting to erode the broad voter anger that contributed so much to Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory. In other words, outrage can be exhausting even for a die-hard Trump-er, and I expect Trump fatigue to spread as long as the current level of political warfare continues.

Indeed, the recent Alabama U.S. Senate and Virginia gubernatorial elections – won by moderate, soft-spoken Democrats amid an improving economy – indicate that precisely this syndrome is becoming established among relatively well-to-do suburban voters who supported the President in the general election. The persistence of Mr. Trump’s weak national poll ratings during at least decent economic times is another sign that many of his Republican, conservative, and independent backers are tiring of his act.

I also expect that the Democrats and the President’s other opponents know this, and will ensure that the various investigations underway into the actions of Mr. Trump and his family, aides, and other associates continue as long as possible. Trump foes in the media, political, and entertainment worlds are likely to keep baiting him with social media and other attacks for the same reason. The only risk they would run (and it’s not negligible):  At some point, the public could well demand that they “put up” (with some specific evidence of major Trump wrongdoing) or “shut up.”     

Even so, unless opposition research, or simply the campaign grind, destroys her aura of empathy and moderation and good sense, who better to cure Trump fatigue, at least by promising to restore some peace and quiet and dignity to the White House, than Winfrey?

Strangely, though, my case for Oprah 2020 also indicates that a major turn for the worse in America’s fortunes could greatly reduce her odds of winning the White House. Despite her impressive business career, I’m by no means convinced that many voters would regard Winfrey as an effective recession fighter. It seems even less plausible that she’d be seen as a promising commander-in-chief type if the world starts appearing a lot more dangerous. (Nor does that judgment reflect gender considerations. Unless you think many voters doubted 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s national security experience or toughness?) Even more important, a worsening economy and a more menacing world would appear a great formula for reigniting American political anger – which Winfrey would struggle to mollify.

And don’t forget the biggest threat to a Winfrey candidacy (though it seems to me unlikely at present):  Mr. Trump is removed from office, and in the process eliminate the shine from the ideas of celebrity candidacies and presidencies. 

But however strongly I feel that, barring a Trump exit, Winfrey could be taking the oath of office in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 2021, I’m less sure about two other big questions: Will she start to play a political role on behalf of Democrats in this year’s off-year elections? And will she be able to encourage enough additional Trump fatigue to affect the outcome notably?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Which Democrats are Serious and Un-Serious About Trade Overhaul?

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AFL-CIO, Bernie Sanders, Canada, Charles Schumer, currency manipulation, Debbie Dingell, Democrats, dispute resolution, Elizabeth Warren, environmental standards, labor standards, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Politico, Richard Neal, Robert Lighthizer, Rosa deLauro, rules of origin, Thea Lee, Trade, Trump, U.S. Trade Representative, unions, Wilbur Ross, William Pascrell, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Usually, paying attention to instances of politicians and other public figures getting up on their soapboxes is a waste of time. Yesterday served up an exception: a press conference held by House Democrats in reaction to President Trump’s official decision to open talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The statements recorded in this Politico account offer some evidence as to which leaders on America’s Left are willing to work with the administration on trade policies that can help the working class voters Democrats still profess to champion, and those who will remain content to sit on the sidelines and take partisan potshots.

Reportedly, all of the House members who spoke at the event “said…they feared Trump would make only modest changes to NAFTA after blasting it as an economic disaster throughout last year’s presidential campaign.” The basis for these worries? The letter sent yesterday by new U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to Congressional leaders announcing the administration’s intention to open NAFTA talks with the two other signatories, Canada and Mexico. According to these House Democrats and some other trade critics, the document apparently was “short on details,” which many claimed indicated Trump’s intention simply to “tweak” rather than comprehensively overhaul the agreement.

All else equal, wondering about the president’s real intentions is anything but unreasonable. His personality, after all, is mercurial, and one of his major trade initiatives to date – the negotiations begun with Beijing following February’s summit with Chinese leader XiJinping – has legitimately disappointed advocates of the major course change he pledged during the campaign. (The other major trade initiative, scrapping the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, kept a leading campaign promise to the letter.) Moreover, the Lighthizer letter is indeed short on specifics.

But none of the participants in the press conference seems to have noticed that in previous statements –including reportedly to leading Democratic lawmakers, top Trump officials have emphasized the need for dramatic NAFTA changes.

For example, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has described as high NAFTA-related priorities greatly tightening the pact’s rules of origin in order to incentivize more non-NAFTA manufacturing investment inside the free trade zone, and restructuring a dispute-resolution system that gives each signatory an equal vote even though the United States represents more than 85 percent of North America’s total economic output. Reinforcing this point was the Lighthizer letter’s contention that “establishing effective implementation and aggressive enforcement of the commitments made by our trading partners under our trade agreements is vital to the success of these agreements and should be improved in the context of NAFTA.”

Meanwhile, Lighthizer reportedly has told Senators that the administration is thinking of adding to NAFTA rules that would prohibit currency manipulation – a move that would set a valuable precedent for future trade deals. In addition, his letter mentioned the need to improve NAFTA’s labor and environmental protections. In my view, they’re largely unenforceable. But they’ve been a prime focus of Democratic Party trade policy positions for decades.

So given that background, it seems fair at this point to finger Connecticut’s Rosa deLauro, New Jersey’s Bill Pascrell, and Massachusetts’ Richard Neal as grandstanders. The former stressed the “tweaking” allegation. The latter two charged that “It was clear from the start that the administration was only interested in working with the Congressional Republican leadership in drafting this notice [the Lighthizer letter].”

I’d also include in this group several key Senate Democrats, including Leader Charles Schumer of New York, former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of New York, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. They voted against Lighthizer’s confirmation despite his decades-long record of fighting predatory foreign trade practices both as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative during the Reagan administration, and as a trade lawyer representing domestic American producers.

More temperate in their judgments were Michigan’s Debbie Dingell, and the AFL-CIO’s Thea Lee. The former stated that she was “investing the time to understand where the consensus is.” The latter said, “We enter every negotiation in a good faith state of mind and we expect a lot from our government. Certainly candidate Trump made a lot of promises about fixing flawed trade agreements and looking out for American workers and good jobs, so we will hold him and his administration to that promise.”

I can’t think of a more reasonable position for politicians and other supporters of a movement that still styles itself as the “party of the common man [and woman].”

Im-Politic: Why U.S. Progressives Need to Become Nationalists

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America First, Bernie Sanders, Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, free trade agreements, globalism, Im-Politic, Immigration, labor unions, nationalism, New Balance, offshoring, Populism, progressives, third world, Trade, Trump, white working class, working class

Tiny groups of individuals shouldn’t be mistaken for entire movements, or even significant factions of movements. Therefore, I don’t want to make too much of those Trump haters who burned their New Balance sneakers and/or slammed the company on social media because it stated that the election as president of a strong trade policy critic would be good for manufacturers seeking to make most of their products in the United States, like itself.

At the same time, the backlash against New Balance sheds lots of light on serious problems in the ranks of American progressivism that contributed to Trump’s triumph and that will need to be solved if the Left end of the country’s political spectrum is to win working class loyalties and convincingly claim populist chops.

Let me start with a little story (one of my father’s favorite phrases!). Back in the late-1990s, when President Clinton had requested new trade negotiating authority from Congress, I attended a meeting at AFL-CIO headquarters of activists seeking to block his ambitions. Early at the session, we agreed that we should explain to legislators and the public what kinds of trade policies we favored, not simply what we opposed, and someone (not me) suggested something along these lines as a unifying theme:

“The main purpose of U.S. trade policy should be to promote healthy growth for the American economy and higher living standards for the majority of the American people.”

That didn’t seem terribly controversial to me. But several hands immediately rose in protest. A representative of the Maryknoll Sisters made clear the objection. Why, she asked, were we ignoring the well-being of the rest of the world?

To his credit, the American labor leader who was running the meeting tried to argue that, however much he sympathized with her point, it was axiomatic that the first obligation of the U.S. government was to promote and defend the interests of the American people. But he didn’t make the argument very emphatically, and many of the others around the table – who came from left-of-center organizations – were even more conflicted. I tried to shore up the first speaker, but quickly realized I was in the greatly outnumbered and spent the rest of the session listening.

I don’t remember what the final version said, and doubt it was ever made public, but the phrasing of that opening point was definitely watered down. On my way out, some folks who worked for labor union offices outside the Beltway came over to me and asked, as they were shaking their heads, “What the heck was that all about?” I replied, “You’ve just learned a valuable lesson about American liberals. Many don’t believe that American workers’ interests should come first.”

They’d actually gotten many such lessons throughout the 1990s. As the first Bush administration and especially the Clinton administration turned U.S. trade policy into an exercise in offshoring, not domestic growth, their progressive critics decided that the best way to resist was to spotlight the harm this new strategy would inflict on workers and peasants in the developing world as well as in the United States. In fact, the third world and its grievances turned into a prime focus of those who famously protested the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle.

This approach made some tactical sense, as many liberals in Congress clearly were not constitutionally inclined to buy an America First trade policy. But although there are any number of ways in which U.S. trade policies could be changed to create more situations of mutual benefit between rich and poor countries (see this recent article for an example), the progressive stance also reflected a refusal to recognize that many hard choices have confronted – and still confront – the nation on trade.

In public policy trying to please everyone tends to wind up pleasing no one. So substantively, this wishful thinking was a formula for confusion at best. Politically, the impact was far worse: The progressives wound up muddying and therefore weakening the message trade critics were trying to send to the public.

Small wonder that even though the critics won some procedural trade fights during the 2000s, even after the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, President Obama managed to secure Congressional passage of three new free trade agreements. Not until a major politician forthrightly vowed to prioritize American interests in trade policy making did the powerful globalization status quo meet its match – and then some.

Based on their initial post-election statements, it seems that progressive leaders realize that rejecting the option of working with Mr. Trump on trade policy would be the height of folly. That is, it seems that they’re implicitly rejecting the notion that the President-elect is so odious that a company that employs American workers despite powerful pressures to offshore should be condemned not for endorsing the whole of his candidacy, but simply for noting that his election would likely aid those efforts.  Therefore, big changes on the trade front seem inevitable above and beyond the collapse of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.

Yet even the progressives’ leaders still face a towering obstacle in their own quest to regain the votes of the millions of working class voters – probably like many of those New Balance workers – who deserted their party’s standard bearer last Tuesday night. They have no chance of succeeding if they continue describing all forms of common sense immigration policies as bigoted. And for those of you who think that I’m just talking about the white working class, keep in mind that the phrase “union household” also describes this constituency.

In other words, during the 2016 elections, progressives in part tried to convince Main Street America that they would gain from a massive increase in the nation’s supply of unskilled labor through both amnesty and the powerful magnet effect it would generate. And at the same time, if these working class voters worried about the resulting downward pressure on wages, along with the effects on the nation’s cohesion of surging bilingualism and its security of newcomers from the culturally medieval Middle East, they were condemned by the Left as nativists, racists, and even worse.

The pointed references to Mr. Trump’s alleged xenophobia by both Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (earlier in the campaign) show that their faction of American politics has much to learn on this score. Until they understand that real U.S. populists can’t be globalists in this day and age, they’re likely to continue wandering the political wilderness.

Im-Politic: The Day After, Part II

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2016 election, African Americans, Bernie Sanders, consumer confidence, Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, exit polls, Hillary Clinton, Hispanics, Im-Politic, labor, NAFTA, polls, TPP, Trade, trade laws, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump, white working class

It’s the day after the day after in America, and I’m still stupefied by the advent of the Age of Trump. I have absolutely no inside info on what to expect in the way of policy recommendations from the transition team or the new administration, so I’ll be just as eager as anyone for the hints and trial balloons to emerge.

But continuing with the theme of yesterday’s post, I believe it is possible to identify some important questions that major actors in American politics – and the voters they’ll keep trying to reach – will need to grapple with. Let’s focus today on the Democrats and their allies and constituencies, since they face the most obvious challenges:

>At least one piece of the conventional wisdom about Hillary Clinton’s failings strikes me as being right on target – especially since the emails exposed by Wikileaks make clear that her senior advisers spotted it as well: She never developed a clear, compelling positive message.

It’s not that “Stronger together” isn’t a positive idea, and no doubt had some appeal at a time of deep national division. But this slogan begs the question “Stronger together to where?” Regularly, Clinton suggested that she meant “to the 1990s,” when her husband was president. Many Americans – particularly in the chattering classes – do indeed view the period as a time of unprecedented prosperity along with peace. To many others, however – especially in working class precincts – the decade evoked memories of job-killing trade agreements like NAFTA. And of course many others were reminded of a string of scandals, both real and alleged.

In fact, I’d take the critique of Clinton’s message one step further. Even though her campaign website and many of her speeches were filled with any number of specific proposals, they were quickly replaced on the campaign trail, and especially in her ads, by a non-stop assault on Trump’s character and qualifications for the Oval Office. Clinton’s defeat strongly indicates that you can’t beat even a deeply flawed something with nothing.

>In fairness to Clinton, however, her messaging problems might have been related to a genuine quandary she faced. Democrats have styled themselves, and often acted like, the Party of the Common Man. As I and others have written, when it comes to issues like trade, demographic changes in Democrats’ ranks seem to be clashing with this relatively populist identity, and Tuesday night’s results indisputably show that the party has the majority of the white working class.

Indeed, according to the preliminary evidence, Clinton’s performance among union voters was feeble by the standards of recent Democratic presidential candidates – despite labor leaders’ vehement opposition to Trump. And keep in mind that nearly half of this electoral bloc is comprised of government workers, who naturally tend to favor the freer spending Democrats. As a result, Clinton’s backing from members of private sector unions was probably much weaker still.

So the Democrats face a fundamental choice, and it could well have rhetorically crippled an undecided Clinton. Will they turn their backs on private sector union members, possibly also in the belief that America’s changing population profile is steadily reducing their political importance? Or despite the gulf between private sector union workers and younger, better educated Democrats on issues like trade (along perhaps with immigration and those amorphous but crucial cultural and values issues), will they try to bring them back?

>Nonetheless, major Democratic constituencies and their leaders – including the unions and the party’s progressive wing – still loudly oppose America’s current approach to trade. But as mentioned above, they’ve been almost hysterically anti-Trump, to the point of incoherence.

If they’re serious about overhauling trade policy, it’s time for these folks to wake up and turn the partisanship down. They’ll soon be getting a president who supports most of their major and longstanding trade positions, including opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), sanctioning China for currency manipulation, rewriting NAFTA, and using U.S. trade law more energetically to fight predatory foreign practices.

Working with Mr. Trump, they can achieve these goals. Remaining in spiteful high dudgeon could doom reforms they’ve sought literally for decades. Statements by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and from organized labor, are promising signs that these progressive leaders are open to cooperation with the incoming Chief Executive. Assuming that these declarations are serious, it’s time for the rest of the movement to fall in line and recognize that for the first time in modern U.S. history, the White House looks to be on their side.

>Finally (for now), nothing could be clearer about the 2016 election returns than the serious flaws they’ve revealed in the so-called science of polling. But politically focused surveys aren’t the only soundings apparently needing major surgery. Many of the best known economic surveys arguably were way off base as well.

For example, many polls – including this week’s exit polls – show strong public support for some form of legalization for illegal immigrants. Can this finding be reconciled with Mr. Trump’s win? Other surveys have revealed a notable warming of Americans’ views of free trade and recent trade agreements. That’s also hard to square with this week’s actual results – and would have been even had Mr. Trump lost by a respectable margin.

Also deserving of greater scrutiny – surveys of consumer and other forms of economic confidence. They have strongly tended to show significant improvement since the depths of the last recession, which isn’t hard to understand. But even their general claims of a simple return to pre-recession levels or, in some cases, better, ring false in light of this week’s voting.

One possible explanation is the gap identified by some researchers between rising optimism by African-Americans and Hispanics and the more downbeat views of whites. But if so, why did Trump fare much better among the latter than widely predicted, and why did he best 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney with both groups even though the economy was considerably weaker four years ago?

I can’t emphasize enough, however, how tentative my observations are, and how long my (and so many other) questions will defy confident answers. My only certainty so far is that election night this week was the most important historic event I’ve ever experienced. (I was born at the end of 1953.) I just wish I knew whether for good or ill.

Im-Politic: The Day After, Part I

Tags

2016 election, Bernie Sanders, Cheap Labor Lobby, conservatism, Democrats, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jeb Bush, Mainstream Media, Marco Rubio, Obama, offshoring lobby, Open Borders, Paul Ryan, Populism, Republicans, Ross Perot, Ted Cruz, Trade

How did I go wrong on analyzing President-elect Donald Trump’s rise during this epochal presidential campaign? Let me count the ways.

My first post on this populist phenom expressed full confidence that he would never win the Republican presidential nomination – or even “come close.” Although I didn’t explicitly say it, I viewed the idea that he could win the White House as positively ludicrous.

After several of his insult barrages and other verbal bombshells, I was all but certain that his campaign was finished.

I had no doubt that, as with third party presidential candidate and fellow tycoon Ross Perot in 1992, his unwillingness to take advice – especially of the critical kind – would cripple his candidacy. Similarly, I believed that he would run his presidential operation the same way that many successful business leaders engage in politics – incompetently.

So I guess I’m qualified to be a Mainstream Media pundit! But seriously, since I got at least some things right – like translating Trump-ish into language that the chattering class should have been able to grasp – I’m not totally sheepish about serving up a first batch of thoughts about what all Americans either are chewing over or should be in the weeks ahead.

>For all the teeth-gnashing about the ugliness of the presidential campaign, and for all the responsibility for it that Trump deserves, imagine what the race for the White House would have been like without him. The Republicans would have nominated either a tool of the Cheap Labor and Offshoring Lobbies like former Florida Governor Jeb Bush or Florida Senator Marco Rubio, or a social conservative extremist like Texas Senator Ted Cruz. And none of them would have felt major pressure to pay attention to the Republican base’s anger about mass immigration, job- and growth-killing trade deals, or the income stagnation they fostered.

On the Democratic side, this kind of conventional Republican nominee may well have enabled Hillary Clinton to win that party’s crown without many nods to the populist positions taken by her chief rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – including on trade policy, along with Wall Street reform.

What a clueless – and maybe dangerously clueless – campaign that would have been! In particular, with no political safety valve, the continuing buildup of working- and middle-class rage that both major-party standard-bearers would have kept blithely ignoring could have exploded much more powerfully.

>The Trump victory could be a milestone in not only American politics, but policy. Yet the potential may never become performance unless this most successful outsider in U.S. history meets a staffing challenge that has hung over his campaign since his strength starting being apparent. Specifically, where is he going to find the populist policy specialists and academics and business types and politicians to fill the hundreds of key cabinet and sub-cabinet posts where presidential ambitions can just as easily die a lingering death as produce real, on-the-ground change?

The institutions needed to nurture and train such cadres simply haven’t existed. Or they’ve been way too small (i.e., modestly funded) to produce the needed numbers and possibly the needed quality. After his first White House victory, President Obama dismayed many of his followers by appointing to key economic positions in particular the kinds of Wall Street-friendly Clintonians that he had raked over the coals during that campaign (including Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination that year). His response? As I recall at the time (and I’m still looking for a link), something to the effect “What choice do I have?”

Although Mr. Obama never intended to bring the substantive break with the past that his successor has vowed, Mr. Trump could find himself in the same position, and his administration could drift steadily, and even imperceptibly towards a more conventional, and indeed donor-class-friendly, form of conservatism.

>Finally, for today, the Trump triumph places the Republican party in its current form in just as much jeopardy as a narrow Trump loss.

Had Trump lost in a landslide, the GOP’s future would have been easy to predict: The Never-Trumpian Washington establishment would have loudly crowed, “I told you so,” and advanced an overpowering rationale for returning to its low-tax, small-government, free-trading, open-borders, global interventionist orthodoxy of recent decades.

But last night’s results could be the death knell of establishment Republicanism – at least as a viable political force. It’s entirely possible that this establishment’s corporate and similar funders could decide for the time being to keep afloat the think tanks, media outlets, lobbying shops, and political consultancies comprising the GOP/conservative establishment. Indeed, since Trump could flop disastrously, preserving this infrastructure in preparation for 2020 makes perfect sense.

But for the foreseeable future, this is Donald Trump’s Republican party (whether he has to staff his administration with lots of standard-issue Republicans or not). House Speaker Paul Ryan, who strongly opposes his own party’s president-elect on issues ranging from trade and immigration to entitlement reform to foreign policy, can talk all he wants about reestablishing party unity. But the key question surrounding such calls is always “Unity on whose terms?” Until Mr. Trump fails a major test of leadership (or even two or three), or until events beyond his control render him ineffective (like a weakening economy) he’ll be calling the shots.  

And however lavishly financed the party’s establishment may remain, this election has made painfully obvious that its grassroots are shrunken and browned out. Since one of the prime takeaways of this election cycle is that voters ultimately count even more than money, it will become increasingly difficult even for the donors to treat the Washington Republicans as a true national political movement, as opposed to a self-appointed clique of supposed leaders with embarrassingly few followers.

So there’s of course a chance that the Ryan wing (emboldened by some truly desperate plutocrats) might at some point bolt and try to reclaim the Republican brand as its own or launch a third party. But these well-heeled dissidents will face the strongest of tides with the weakest of paddles – the more so given Ryan’s acknowledgment that Trump’s unexpectedly strong showing helped the GOP retain both houses of Congress. 

Tomorrow I’ll be offering some further initial thoughts. Until then, like so many others, I’ll go back to catching my breath!

Im-Politic: Clinton’s Campaign Sure Thinks the Mainstream Media is “With Her”

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2016 election, ABC News, Bernie Sanders, CBS News, CNN, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, media, MSNBC, NBC News, NPR, PBS, The Intercept, The New York Times, Washington Post, Wikileaks

The word “surrogate” is defined in dictionaries as “a substitute, especially a person deputizing for another in a specific role or office.” Now thanks to the Wikileaks disclosures of internal emails and other strategy documents from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, we know that the Democratic candidate and her operatives believed that many members of the Mainstream Media fit that description for her upcoming White House race as well.

According to a memo released by Wikileaks on Friday, and first reported (to my knowledge) on The Intercept website, the list of journalists viewed by the Clinton-ites as reliable conveyors of her message included numerous opinion journalists whose liberal leanings are no secret. Examples include E.J. Dionne, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post; and David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and Gail Collins of The New York Times.

There’s nothing wrong in principle with their presence. There’s no evidence so far that any of them offered their services to the campaign either voluntarily or in response to a request. And unless material comes out indicating active collusion, although surely most are bristling at the suggestion that they’ve been in the tank for anyone in politics, none of these pundits has any control over how they’re viewed by politicians.

But the Clinton characterization of other list members is much more troubling. Dan Balz of the Post isn’t exactly a pure-play columnist – presumably that’s why his employer doesn’t place his pieces on the op-ed page. But his “news analyses” are supposed to occupy some middle ground between opinion and hard news. That concept isn’t necessarily illegitimate. But maybe the Post could clue its readers in on how it views the relevant distinctions, so they could make up their own minds as to how to view these articles?

Another category of listees is problematic, too, but maybe a little less so, since Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Mathews host talk shows on a cable network (MSNBC) that doesn’t try very hard to hide its partisanship. (Similar criticisms of course can be leveled at many of their counterparts on Fox News.)  

Major problems, however, surround the inclusion of news show hosts and anchors who do style themselves as objective journalists. For reasons, I described yesterday, no one should be surprised that ABC News Sunday talk show host George Stephanopoulos is viewed as a Clinton surrogate. But his CBS counterpart John Dickerson? Wolf Blitzer of CNN? Charlie Rose, who does double duty at CBS and PBS?

And scariest of all is the number of listed journalists who present themselves as completely objective beat reporters, like Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Jon King and Jeff Zeleny of CNN, Mara Liasson of NPR, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, and Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post. Moreover, in another memo, the New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman was described as an especially “friendly journalist” who has “never disappointed” the Clinton team with her performance after their promptings.

Since this material dates from spring, 2015, it’s of course nothing more than speculation (however plausible) to venture that Clinton’s operatives have viewed these same journalists as trusted allies in the campaign against her Republican opponent, Donald Trump. (He didn’t declare his candidacy until June.) But the timing is revealing nonetheless because by April, Clinton’s main rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, had thrown his hat into the ring, and it was clear by then that many voters in the party’s left wing were recoiling at the prospect of Clinton as liberalism’s standard-bearer.

As a result, these memos add to the case that much of the national press corps has seen its real mission not as reporting events as objectively as possible, or even as fronting for Democrats, but as defending a center-left status quo against populist challengers of all stripes. Certainly Sanders and many of his backers count themselves as victims.

Fortunately, the only silver lining in this picture is a bright one: Americans’ trust in the mass media to give them the straight news dope is at an all-time low, at least according to Gallup. Undoubtedly that’s a big reason why the establishment media’s finances show signs of weakening across the board. If money really does talk in the ranks of these profit-seeking enterprises, mounting business pressures could push them back to their more responsible roots. Or the Mainstream Media’s owners could arrogantly decide to go down with their ships – in which case the big question will be whether investors more devoted to quality journalism will recognize the vacuum they’ve left.

Im-Politic: Will Sanders and His Backers Become Real Revolutionaries?

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2016 election, Bernie Sanders, Democratic National Committee, Democrats, DNC, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, emails, Im-Politic, Immigration, leaks, Populism, refugees, Tim Kaine, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Wikileaks

You want a humbling experience? Try coming back from a week-long vacation perfectly timed to coincide with possibly the most tumultuous presidential nominating convention in recent decades! While relaxing on and around the beach in Fenwick Island, Delaware, I generally kept the electronic devices off, and so got only the general drift of events in Cleveland. My efforts to catch up yesterday, moreover, only reinforce my doubts about adding much useful to the latest torrent of news, analysis, and simple bloviation that’s flooded the nation – even though it’s far from clear that much new has been learned, or that many minds have been fundamentally changed.

Thank goodness the latest major development came just as I was returning home: the hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails released by Wikileaks on Friday night. Much has already been written about how angry they are no doubt making Hillary Clinton’s former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders, along with the Vermont Senator’s passionate supporters. 

Much more should and I hope will be written about how the disclosures and their fallout will affect the vast -but largely unrealized – potential that still remains for a grand left-right populist coalition to come together in American politics once this year’s presidential race is over.

The leaked DNC emails put the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party squarely on the spot. Barring major new revelations to the contrary, they’re the most powerful possible injection of salt into Sanders Nation wounds that were rawer than ever over the Democratic platform committee’s refusal to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, and over party standard-bearer Hillary Clinton’s choice of centrist, Big Business-friendly Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate.

Every suspicion held by the Sanders camp that the Democrats’ leadership worked overtime to ensure his defeat – despite the DNC’s own requirement of neutrality – has now been spectacularly confirmed. And who now can reasonably doubt that the DNC was motivated mainly by the threat Sanders’ economic populism posed to its Clinton-friendly donor class?

Donald Trump has made numerous verbal overtures to Sanders and his supporters throughout his successful maverick campaign for the Republican nomination. But no matter how many points of agreement he spotlighted – notably on trade, Wall Street reform, the bloated role of corporate and other special interest money in American politics, and hyper-interventionist U.S. foreign policies – he’s been angrily rebuffed both by the candidate himself and the vast majority of his followers.

Of course, Trump has made this rejection-ism far too easy for the Democratic Left, thanks largely to his inflammatory rhetoric on illegal immigration (especially from Mexico) and a long string of insulting comments both before and during his presidential run about any number of groups and individuals. In addition, serious questions have been raised – and not adequately answered – about Trump’s previous and current business practices. And because Trump’s pugnacious personality seems to rule out any efforts even to acknowledge the resulting concerns, his chances of victory in November have been damaged.

But the emergence of a large, genuinely populist constituency on the Right creates a much thornier longer-term challenge to Sanders Democrats if they’re serious about their avowed goal of revolutionizing American politics: Can they and will they abandon strongly held positions of their own that arguably have hardened into shibboleths and that limit their own bipartisan appeal as surely – and needlessly – as Trump’s excessive political incorrectness? The two biggest tests I can think of concern immigration.

Leftist Democrats have been outraged by Trump’s description, in his campaign kickoff announcement, of at least many Mexican immigrants as criminals. But do they really support the immigration policies laid out in the Democratic platform, which despite its reference to “reasonable limits” on legal immigration, would create powerful magnets to inflows by offering lightly conditioned citizenship to the illegals already in the United States; by streamlining the family reunification process that already fosters far too much chain migration; by gutting even today’s weak enforcement and deportation programs; and by expanding the range of public services made available to residents “regardless of immigration status”?

Do they really believe that pumping up the domestic labor supply to this extent (including with the increases in visa quotas for highly skilled immigrants favored by Clinton and her Silicon Valley backers) will benefit the existing legal American workforce? In other words, do they really believe that handing over current American jobs to a burgeoning flood of newcomers is any less damaging to the nation’s working and middle classes than shipping those jobs overseas through offshoring-friendly trade deals?

Or should they listen to a voice who a decade ago warned that the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill then before Congress “would bring low-wage workers into this country in order to depress the already declining wages of American workers” and that “With poverty increasing and the middle-class shrinking, we must not force American workers into even more economic distress”?

That voice was Bernie Sanders’, and although he was referring specifically to the bill’s guest worker programs, the economics behind his analysis apply across the immigration board.

Sanders backers also need to reexamine their views on admitting immigrants and refugees from war-torn Middle Eastern countries. Let’s agree that Trump’s original Muslim ban would have been unconstitutional and unworkable. (Even Trump has backed away from this position.) Do they honestly agree with the Obama administration’s insistence that current vetting procedures are adequate? Do they not recognize – as even the president grudgingly but repeatedly has acknowledged – that Islam has presented a distinctive terrorism problem? Indeed, on Thursday, he stated that “the Muslim faith itself…has driven violence in some parts of the world.”

Are they dead-set against acting on the logical implication of Obama’s remarks, and participating in efforts to devise practicable, legal methods for protect their fellow citizens from threats they face from both without and within? Are they determined to self-righteously remain on their soapboxes and condemn as bigots and xenophobes the roughly half of their fellow countrymen who endorse Trump’s fundamental demand to end business-as-usual approaches? And do Sanders’ populists line up behind Clinton’s call actually to make the domestic Islam problem bigger, by quintupling current immigration and refugee admissions from the Middle East?

So far, Trump’s gratuitous bombast has handed Sanders’ backers, as well as supporters of Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a convenient excuse for opposing immigration proposals that would directly and concretely bolster the prosperity and security of the working and middle-class Americans they claim to champion – and that large chunks of the mass public clearly favor. By the same token, at least apparently in their minds, Trump’s excesses have relieved Democratic Leftists of any responsibility to reach out to their fellow populists on the opposite end of the spectrum, try to bridge the immigration and other gaps, and create a transformational new coalition in American politics.

But Democratic populists can’t count on this excuse much longer. Whoever prevails in the general election, populists of all stripes will need to cooperate to ensure that their unprecedented combined impact this political cycle produces enduring successes. And no current issue touches core questions of economics, national security – and national identity – like immigration. Left-wing Democrats who want to be successful revolutionaries will focus on identifying and expanding common ground, and on working with Trump, his backers, and that group of more conventional, less sharp-edged politicians who decide to proceed down the trail the Republican nominee has blazed. Those content simply to advertise their political virtue while establishment policies continue threatening Main Street Americans will keep demonizing Trump and his insurgency.

Im-Politic: More Political Delusions from the Chattering Class Bubble

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2016 election, Barton Swaim, Bernie Sanders, chattering class, Donald Trump, Im-Politic, polls, RealClearPolitics, Washington Post

It’s always a tough call on any given day to decide which establishment media product deserves the award for “Dumbest (Article/Post/Broadcast) of the Day.” That’s why we all owe a debt of gratitude to someone named Barton Swaim, who for some reason has been selected by the Washington Post as a (regularly) “contributing columnist”. Because his essay this morning titled, “America is off the tracks, but the GOP errs in thinking it can right her” (not exactly catchy, to be sure) is the runaway winner.

The piece performs the impressive feat of making not one but two arguments that clash with reality. The first concerns his apparent belief that only the kinds of Republicans and conservatives who are inclined to support Donald Trump believe that America has (for various reasons) veered onto the “wrong track,” as pollsters like to put it.

Weirdly, Swaim says he agrees with this concern – and in fact, he articulates the conservative version well. But where does he get the idea that the fundamental worry is exclusive to supporters of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee? Or to any faction on the Right? Certainly not from the polls – which, for all their serious shortcomings, provide us with most of the major data points on such matters.

One of the most complete compendiums of survey data can (easily) be found on the RealClearPolitics website. The surveys in its files go back to early 2009. And as can be seen from the results over more than seven years, the vast majority of the time, the vast majority of Americans have viewed the country as being on the “wrong track” as opposed to moving in the “right direction.” Since (again, according to polling data), conservatives remain far from a majority of all Americans, then obviously the wrong-trackers must include lots of moderates and liberals.

Another kind of important clue regarding the non-partisanship of major voter concerns that’s escaped Swaim’s notice: Bernie Sanders shockingly unexpected run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Does the author think that a self-identified Socialist from a tiny state would have come so close to unhorsing the Democratic establishment favorite Hillary Clinton if most of much of the American Left thought the country was doing swimmingly?

Swaim’s second goof is at least as bizarre. It’s his contention that the most sensible choice that voters can make this year is to bow to the inevitable. In Swaim’s words:

“A republic in decline doesn’t need a leader who will try to force its electorate to be something it isn’t, or who will insult and berate its leaders into doing things differently. What’s needed, rather, is… [s]omeone…who can manage the decline of a great nation without making things worse.”

To be fair, the ellipses I’ve stuck in the above quote represent text in which Swaim offers entirely legitimate criticisms of Trump’s candidacy, as well as the eminently reasonable hope for “someone who will stand against the excesses of modern liberalism without entertaining the vain hope of obliterating it….”

But if Swaim thinks that either conservatives or liberals or moderates are looking for a president whose top priority is presiding over more of the same, he’s either seriously delusional or – as is much more likely – so comfortably esconced in the nation’s chattering class bubble that he equates his own privileged position with that enjoyed by himself and his affluent peers. Come to think of it, that’s probably why the equally cloistered Washington Post believes these thoughts are worth presenting.

Im-Politic: The Establishment Keeps Doubling Down Against Populism

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2016 election, American politics, Ben Domenech, Bernie Sanders, Brexit, Donald Trump, establishment, Im-Politic, Jonathan Rauch, Populism, special interests, The Atlantic, The Federalist, think tanks, United Kingdom

Brexit underscores the belief that I have expressed throughout this presidential campaign cycle that opponents of the populist wave breaking all over the high income world have two basic choices: They can demonize the populists and their champions, or they can propose policies capable of addressing constructively the legitimate grievances of these voters. A lengthy article just posted on The Atlantic‘s website adds to the evidence that the American political establishment has overwhelmingly opted for choice number one.

Author Jonathan Rauch makes clear in his title how he interprets the rise of anti-establishment candidates like presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and unexpectedly strong Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders: “How American Politics Went Insane.” His explanation: Well-intentioned reformers across the nation’s ideological spectrum went way overboard in removing the flaws in the formal and informal political systems that on balance served the United States well for decades, and wound up proverbially throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Rauch is certainly correct in pointing out that various recent changes mandated in U.S. politics have backfired, or at the least had damaging unintended consequences. He’s also correct in noting that the results have too often strengthened extremist impulses and weakened their moderate counterparts.

But the author is completely off-base in claiming that all would be set right if the nation only recognized the dangers of the transparency and openness in government it’s insisted on, and resolved to return to the days when “institutions and brokers—political parties, career politicians, and congressional leaders and committees…historically held politicians accountable to one another and prevented everyone in the system from pursuing naked self-interest all the time.”

As these intermediaries’ influence fades,” Rauch continues, “politicians, activists, and voters all become more individualistic and unaccountable. The system atomizes. Chaos becomes the new normal—both in campaigns and in the government itself.”

Ben Domenech of The Federalist has written a wonderful takedown of Rauch’s establishmentarian bias. Especially devastating is his observation that the practitioners of “insider politics” – including “influence peddlers,” other types of “middle men,” and particularly the wealthy, entrenched special interests they served – used the system to enrich and empower themselves even further. In the process, of course, they left more and more of their compatriots on the outs.

Domenech could have gone even further, however, and pointed out that the author’s establishmentarian bias is actually self-serving. After all, Rauch is not only a regular contributor to establishment publications The Atlantic and National Journal. He’s a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a mainstay of a Washington, D.C. think tank world that, as I’ve written, has turned into a dedicated “idea laundering” machine – advancing the policy preferences of its corporate and other one-percent-er funders by cloaking them in quasi-academic, objective-looking garb.

But Domenech’s dispositive argument entails Rauch’s almost complete neglect of substance. Domenech calls Rauch’s thesis “bereft of data and thoroughly at odds with the data we have.” I’d emphasize the converse: Rauch is almost completely process-oriented – which of course reflects the establishment worldview that the major, strategic issues are all being handled just splendidly, and that the only remaining questions concern some mechanics.

Domenech does a nice job of listing the substantive establishment failures Rauch glosses over: in addition to Vietnam and Watergate, “Impeachment. 9/11. Iraq. Katrina. Congressional corruption. Financial meltdown….Stagnant wages.” (Domenech also includes Obamacare and the president’s “failed stimulus,” but in my view, those cases are far from screamingly obvious.)

It’s true that Rauch, and his defenders, can point out that for all those troubles and even crises, the United States is still chugging along, and that the vast majority of its citizens enjoy living standards that remain the envy of most of the rest of humanity. At the same time, it’s crucial to remember how many immense built-in advantages the United States has always enjoyed, including generally friendly and, more important, weak, neighbors; abundant natural resources; and a national creed that has encouraged wealth creation and equal opportunity (however often the latter has been absent for major groups).

That is, the United States remains immensely difficult to damage fatally both geopolitically and economically. In fact, given the record cited above – and the crucial policy mistakes were supported by mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike – the most important question raised by this year’s American political tumult arguably isn’t it’s reached such proportions. It’s what took so long.